Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

This Most Unexcellent Canopy, The Air

9/16/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
      My daughter lives in Los Angeles, where a on a September morning the sky should have been a clear light cerulean blue, the trees green, the air balmy. Here's a picture I took of her neighborhood last year:
Picture
     Here's a picture my daughter sent me of her neighborhood the other day at 9:55 am:
Picture
      The landscape has turned grey with a dull red sun that looks like a dying star. The air is noxious, one can feel it in one's lungs if one stays outside for very long. The children, still schooling at home because of the COVID-19 epidemic, now cannot even  go outside to play.  ​
       My sister lives in Portland, Oregon. A temperate rain forest, Portland is - was - a beautiful city of parks and pine trees bordered by mountains where plant life grows  so abundantly that it springs up through cracks in the sidewalk. And the air in Portland is - was - always so fresh and cool and clean.
        Here are some pictures I took while walking around my sister's neighborhood on a September da
y a few years ago:
Picture
Picture
Picture
     Here's a picture my sister took from the parking lot of her neighborhood grocery parking lot a few days ago:
Picture
​   At this moment Portland has the dirtiest, most hazardously caustic air of anywhere on earth. And though my sister has three air purifiers and her air conditioner running, she says the inside of her house smells like an ash tray. In spite of being an avid hiker, swimmer and outdoorswoman, my sister dares not tax her lungs with much physical work, even indoors.
      My daughter has lived in Los Angeles for 15 years; my sister has lived in Portland for close to two decades. Neither has experienced air events anything like what they're experiencing now. In fact it's only been within the past few year that the West Coast has been plagued by these episodes of an atmosphere so polluted by fire smoke that the air changes color, consistency, and smell and forces the population to stay indoors. This is because for the past few years - since 2018 - the American West Coast has suffered the worst wildfire seasons in history, with each year the fires progressively deadlier, more destructive, and producing more poisonous - and farther reaching - pollution of the air.
       But it's not only the West Coast suffering  the atmospheric fallout from the wildfires that have burned more than 5 million acres of land in the past two weeks. The foul smoke released from the wildfires has been picked up on the wind, the jet stream that travels across the continent and around the globe. By yesterday there was a haze over the sun in Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, and  Washington D.C. Based on satellite data, by this weekend that smokey air from the West Coast wildfires will be in the atmosphere of Europe . 
Picture
       And so people around the world will all be breathing in a greater or lesser amount of the same pollution born of monster fires born of global climate change that we human beings have caused and are now not doing enough to stop.  And all I can think about are the people I love breathing in that terrible air.                    
 References   
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/09/16/wildfire-smoke-reaches-europe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_wildfires

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    or from
    The Book Loft
    of German Village,
    Columbus, Ohio
    Picture
    Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
    Picture

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































Proudly powered by Weebly